First Edition features original works by Northern California Jewish writers. Appearing the first issue of each month, it includes a poem and an excerpt from a novel or short story.
For They Are Our Life
by mark taksa
Inside a shabby apartment, I sink to the floor
beside a bucket of plaster and stare
at the cracked wall as if it is the avenue
below the window. I can hear a train approach
like a desert wind getting louder by inches.
Outside, on stilts high over the aroma of street food,
the train stops. Far away, I hear a clarinet,
then a violin, then a drum, then a song.
It is evening. As I remember wandering among lovers
of that song, the wall crack opens
and wall paper separates into curtains.
I remember my grandfather
telling me about the Torah in an alcove
where celebration was secret.
I imagine following the Torah out to the train
where a man in a white robe sings.
His eyes welcome me with a mother’s touch.
Holding the Torah, he praises a name
higher than his song. As he disappears into mothers
and fathers and brothers and sisters,
he stands in their stories that follow me back
and helps me to fill the crack — until no crack remains.
Foundation
by mark taksa
Over bread remembered from other countries,
the baker urged the blessing of the tailor
who wore the bowler of the hat maker
who dressed in the tailor’s suit. Heavy with brisket,
the jeweler lightened with the words of the butcher.
The butcher’s hand glistened with the jeweler’s blessing.
Into the hush after the blessing, the singer spoke her dream
of more voices wrapped in the invisible ribbon
of the chorus. She invited travelers,
owning little more than a blessing,
to stay for food. A lawyer pledged his labor’s yield.
The shoe seller agreed. The miller concurred.
Years filled the town. The baker saw
her lost youth in children’s faces
and asked that the voices joined in the blessing
buy ground for the final mingling
of their bones. And the people merged
their good fortune into ground and stone …
Stone lives, if that is how we witness it.
People, remembering chants under high ceilings,
yearn to be cushioned in air thick with flesh and cloth and sweat
and perfume, yearn for shared walls to house a baby naming…
Thus, from scattered dreams in many houses,
comes a foundation yet to be born.
Mark Taksa lives in Albany. His poems have appeared in Big Muddy, Poem, Slant, River Styx, Hubbub, Greensboro Review, Poetry East, Green Mountains Review, Indiana Review, Cimarron Review, and other publications. “For They Are Our Life” appeared in Poetica magazine.
Works may be submitted to fiction editor Ilana DeBare at [email protected] or poetry editor Joan Gelfand at [email protected]. Fiction excerpts may run up to 2,500 words, but only 800 words will appear in the print edition, with the rest appearing online. All prose and poetry published to date can be viewed at jweeklylit.wordpress.com.